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Soups. Stock.

A hearty beef or veal stock made with bacon, butter, vegetables, and spices, simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Soups. Stock.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat and bacon into 3-inch pieces.

  2. Rub the butter on the bottom of a stewpan.

Make the stock

  1. Add ½ pint of water, the meat, and all other ingredients.

  2. Cover the stewpan.

  3. Place the pan on a sharp fire, stirring occasionally.

  4. When the bottom is covered with a pale, jelly-like substance, add 4 quarts of cold water.

  5. Simmer gently for 5 hours, removing any scum that forms.

  6. Strain through a fine sieve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef shin or veal knuckle
Provides collagen and meat flavour that gelatinise into a rich, body-giving stock.
Lean bacon or ham
Adds savoury, smoky depth to the broth.
Onions
Contribute sweetness and aromatic flavour as they cook down into the stock.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and background flavour to the stock.
Turnip
Adds subtle sweetness and earthy flavour to the stock.
Celery
Contributes aromatic, herbal flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim the scum. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear, because a hard boil emulsifies fat and fine particles into it. Removing the scum as it rises keeps the stock clean-tasting and clear.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, butter, onion, turnip, carrot, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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